


A Longing Most Unholy

by OkeyDokeyLoki



Category: The Crucible - Miller
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, Heartbreak, Hurt, Loss of Virginity, Love, Miscarriage, Pain, Pregnancy, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 01:21:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16419722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OkeyDokeyLoki/pseuds/OkeyDokeyLoki
Summary: Before the witches, before the lies, before the executions and panic, there was a man, and a young woman who worked for him, who shared a love that no one will understand.





	A Longing Most Unholy

One day he would come to think of her smile and laughter as the things that damned him most.

But then again, one day he would love them, miss her soft skin when she is gone, and will see the outline of her beautiful body in the ceiling at night when he cannot find sleep.

Now, he's just met her, and at first he doesn't think much of her, except that she's striking, and he finds himself looking at her in silent moments.

She's good with his boys (that's the second thing he notices), smiling at them and hugging them.

Her gaze is fierce and intelligent, almost sharp. He feels as though his eyes are pricked when they meet hers.

He's surprised to find that he thinks of her when he's working in the fields, when he should only think on his work.

He hears her sing in the house, quietly, voice that of an angel's, sweet and soft. They are not supposed to sing, but he lets her.

He cannot stop her.

Then, one day as he walks to get water, he sees her, bathing in the river he gathers from, naked.

She hasn't noticed him, her back turned, her honey-colored hair cascading down her shoulders and disappearing into the coursing water.

John must have made a sound; she looks back at him, arms under her breasts, back still turned.

Her gaze is so wild, so wicked, and she smiles gently, before submerging into the water, and leaving him wondering if she had ever been there.

He leaves, and feels her gaze on his back.

That night is the first night he dreams of her, her soft hands, her hot, welcoming, pliant thighs, her hair a curtain around their faces as they lean in, the feeling of her on him, seated in his lap and hips rocking seductively as she rides him.

He wakes, cock stone-hard and an angry red, and limps outside, naked and grunting in discomfort, and strokes himself to the image of her body, clad only in her hair and pinpricks of river water.

He cannot look at his wife when he returns; he's afraid that his eyes might give away his sin.

Now when she looks at him, her eyes are penetrating, and mischievous, as though she knows what he's done.

He is certain Abigail has been a dream when she's gone, until she returns.

Then she comes to work again the next day, and she looks more a woman than ever; her breasts have filled out, from a girl's to a woman's, prominent and distracting.

He cannot stand idly by, loins aching, any longer.

The moment she slips away to milk the cows, he's after her.

He arrives minutes after her, and her top is undone and her breasts are bare as she's taking down her hair.

His breath catches in his throat, and he knows that she's seen his sin in his eyes, can look through the windows to his soul.

He feels raw before her glory, and before he realizes it he's in her arms, face buried between the perfect twin globes on her chest.

As she guides him up into the loft, he sneaks a glance up the length of her shapely legs to the paradise between, and his legs go weak for a moment.

She lays him down, sunlight catching the dust motes, her hair ablaze with light, and seats herself on his cock, just as he's imagined.

It's everything he's thought and better as she rides him, gently at first before picking up speed.

She guides his hands to her breasts and he groans, balls clenching as he attempts to hold in his tremendous load.

The pace quickens until she's tossing her head and uttering breathy moans and holding onto his sides for anchorage.

He moves his hands to her sides, and before he comes he flips them abruptly so he can drive into her brutally; he wants her to experience what he can feel.

He comes then, still rutting into her, and then she clenches around him, arms tightening around him and nails clawing at his back as she hits her release.

"I thought you might not follow me here," she whispers as they retreat deeper into the hay.

He lays his jacket across the straw for them to lay on, and she nestles against his chest happily.

"I had no choice," he rumbles, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

He takes her anywhere and almost everywhere; when Elizabeth is in town, the bed, when she is home, the barn, when the boys are in the barn, in the river or forest.

He tells her that he loves her a week after their first night together.

A month after their first night, he and Elizabeth argue.

"You are cold to me, John," she says quietly, back to him.

"I only aim to please you, wife," he asserts with a grunt.

"You turn your face and I cannot look in your eyes."

"A man cannot look at the work he's done or the food his wife has made?"

"You avoid touch."

"Harvest approaches; I am tired."

"Your voice is silent often."

"Cease your damned accusations, woman!"

She quiets in the dark, her sorrow hanging over him like a cloud, before it turns cold. "Good night, John."

Abigail is ill for some time, but she still travels to him to take him, before slipping away like a shadow.

"I wish your boys were mine," she admits to him one night. He took her in the loft that night, so they lay in the straw, and her hair is splayed above her.

She's holding his hand, tracing the calluses with her soft fingers.

"Mm," he mumbles contentedly. "They take to you as though they were."

She's quiet, the only sound her breath for a time. "John."

"Hm?"

"I haven't bled for three month, now," she says.

His eyes crack open, and he sits up and pulls her into his lap, and lifts her dress.

Low on her stomach is a small protrusion, something he had seen twice before in Elizabeth before the boys had been born.

He crushes her to him, arms holding her close.

Unbridled anxiety and worry flows through his veins and his heartbeat quickens.

"John?" She asks. She seems to feel his heartbeat against hers.

"She'll know. Oh, God," he whispers in agony, "God will know."

Her voice strengthens. "She won't know. I'll leave it at your doorstep; she'll think it was begotten off a stranger. Convince her to take it in." She grabs his shoulders firmly and catches his eye as she says this. "God would have sent us a sign by now if he disapproved. It's not a sin to love, John."

"The child will be cared for," he speaks at last, promising her.

He loves her still.

Elizabeth suspects nothing of the child. She regards him and Abigail with curious, betrayed eyes, setting quietly about her work, lips in a thin line of disapproval.

Reverend Parris keeps Abigail in his house indefinitely as his church is being built; she is to knit the doilies and sew the quilts that will hang on the wall.

His body aches for her, craving her.

To the ignorant eye Abigail simply prepares for the colder months by wearing heavier, thicker dresses that concealed what was beneath, but Proctor knows without a shadow of a doubt that her belly swells beneath it and wonders how Betty keeps silent about it.

Abigail worked fast; she returns to the Proctors' farm soon, and John takes a horse to her so she isn't forced to walk any more the moment he sees her.

Her gait has changed slightly, he notices. The boys run to her when before she would have run to meet them.

She greets them affectionately, the way a gentle mother would see to her own.

Elizabeth is indifferent to them because they look like John. They are starved for love.

They lean into her touch like flowers seeking the light and John feels his heart in his throat.

He leads her to the barn. She almost cannot make it up the ladder to the loft.

He takes her gently, her skin impossibly soft and smooth against his.

She's beautiful, he thinks. Her belly is round and slightly heavier now, a small globe beneath her chest.

Her breasts have swelled, and with a satisfied moan he holds them.

She looks up at him with wide eyes, as if he's the only thing in the world that matters to her.

He loves her with everything he has.

She holds him after their lovemaking is done with, and runs her fingers through his hair, humming something low and sweet.

His head rests on her thigh beside their unborn child.

John thanks God for her and their time together, despite their coupling being a sin. For the moment, he feels no shame.

All he can feel is her hands on his head, her thigh beneath his head, and her belly against his temple.

Their sweet moment doesn't last and as time goes on it becomes harder and harder to sneak away with her.

Elizabeth watches from all the windows, face drawn and smile dead for months.

Abigail makes the boys worry over her when she won't play with them in secret, but they promise that they won't tell Mother about it.

Harvest passes, and winter arrives; it's biting cold in the morning and the temperature drops during the day.

Abigail's abdomen continues to swell, and John worries that Elizabeth can see it every time she looks at her.

She is chided and admonished for being lazy, slapped for insolence on occasion and accused of not showing up to work promptly enough.

Each time, John holds his tongue and bites down when the abuse is too much. Elizabeth doesn't know, this reassures him, for she wouldn't slap a pregnant woman, but he feels awful that he cannot protect Abigail from her.

Elizabeth cries at night, silently, her shoulders trembling. "When can we return to the peace we once had?" She asks him softly, voice beaten down and weary.

"I don't know, wife," he tells her truthfully.

She seeks his hand in the darkness, like a child, and he holds it. He owes her that much.

Elizabeth begins to rekindle her connection with the boys, smiling at them and praising them.

The smiles are weak at best, but it's all the boys ever wanted. They're joyful that their mother has come around again, after so long.

Abigail's fire hasn't been quenched under Elizabeth's freezing disapproval. If anything, it burns brighter yet.

She loathes his wife.

He cannot hate her for it, just as he cannot hate Elizabeth for feeling betrayed by his distance.

Even if he wants to do something, it's too late.

The end begins when he's out in the freezing sleet late in the year, the sky clouded and twilight darkening, preparing for the moon. There's snow on the ground, but the temperature is just around freezing.

The fire has died and the house is almost as cold as outside.

He's gathering wood, to be placed in a sack he carried with him so it stays dry, and through the forest a sharp, keening cry pierces the night.

It's high-pitched and brimming with agony, some fear, and a chill runs up John's spine.

Instinctively he takes off towards the cry, which is difficult at first because the sound bounces off of the trees and he gets disoriented.

He follows it out of the forest, and panic begins to slide through his veins, fast and icy; it's coming from the barn.

In his head runs a mantra of _ohpleasegodno_ as he charges towards the barn.

The sleet soaks through his shirt and it's a cold like he's never felt before, but he cannot stop running to her.

He explodes inside, the doors flying open and cows mooing in alarm before realizing it's John and resting again.

He shuts them quickly before turning around and fully comprehending what he sees.

Abigail is halfway upright, thighs parted and dress hiked up aggressively, belly exposed to the open air. Her hair is slick with sweat, her eyes screwed tightly shut, her knuckles white as she grips at a beam against the wall.

She is seated in a pool of blood. "John," she chokes out desperately when she sees him, tears breaking the threshhold and running down her face.

He struggles to keep calm as he runs to her and she takes his hand when he offers it.

Then he secures his arms beneath her and lifts her to his chest, not an easy task but he does it for her.

She's shaking violently in his arms, breathing heavily and unevenly as she cradles her swollen abdomen, and he wants desperately to help her through the pain.

He sets her down on the table he built in the fall just in case, and holds her hand as blood gushes from her. "There's something wrong, John! Help me, please!"

Something in her voice makes him very suddenly afraid for her life and the child's life. It is only the sixth month.

He checks how the birth is progressing, gently reaches inside her just as he would a foaling mare, and blanches.

"Abigail."

She cannot accept the defeat in his voice.

"It's dying."

"Get it out, John. Get it out!" She cries, breaking his heart a little more.

Thunder crashes outside.

He does as she asks. He helps it out of her body, encouraging her quietly as she wails, contractions still ripping through her.

It slips into his hand, finally, face purple. Its mouth opens and closes but nothing comes out.

It's a girl.

"John, give it to me," Abigail panics, arms outstretched.

He obeys, handing over their daughter, and she holds her fast to her chest and pats her back like John told her to.

Abigail feels their daughter's heartbeat slow to a stop, and she screams, even louder than before, voice growing hoarse from the intensity of her grief.

John's heart momentarily feels stopped, and he falls to his knees, uncaring of the momentary pain it causes.

He crushes Abigail and their dead daughter to him, drinking her scent and swallowing his pain down.

They stay motionless for a long time, not entirely sure how long it is.

Abigail falls unconscious in the interval, so John tosses a blanket and saddle over a horse, places her gently on it, the baby still in her arms, her thighs still crimson, and climbs up behind her.

It's the longest ride to Reverend Parris's than he has ever known. Abigail's tears freeze to her face.

He wakes her up when they arrive, and John finds a shovel and despite the cold ground and his cold hands, he digs. He digs a tiny grave.

It's tough work but time slips by and the hole is dug before he realizes it.

Abigail has wrapped the baby (Anna, she calls her) in a blanket, and places her tenderly in the ground.

John holds her one last time before riding away, heart heavy with guilt.

This is God's punishment -he decides bitterly- I am a sinner and I am being punished for it.

He knows in his heart he cannot look at Abigail or hold her without thinking of Anna.

He's relieved when Elizabeth catches them kissing a week later, halfheartedly on his part, and she's fired.

There's a hole where his heart used to be, and whatever remnants there are pity Abigail and still, God help him, love her.

**Author's Note:**

> This kinda hurt to write. My goal was honestly to create tears, so if you don't mind, how did I do? Read The Crucible in school and felt the chemistry between Abigail and John was still sort of unexplained, so I decided to write about it. Ain't no birth control in Salem


End file.
